Across the pond

Astonishingly, Gordon Brown, who is not even very popular with his own party, is now neck to neck in the opinion polls with David Cameron, the Conserative’ s Mr Nice, with his his delightfully pregnant wife. So the unexpected might even happen. We might all wake up on 7 May to discover dear Gordon is still running the shop.

But not if the predominantly right wing British press has its way.

The nasty squad is pouring out its vitriol. Targetting  the workers on the airlines and the railways for daring to strike in protest against what their bosses are doing.

The trade union bosses, we are told, are using their bullying tactics again, to sabotage the Britain which was made Britain great again in 1982 by Margaret Thatcher, with the help of her ally, Rupert Murdoch. Who cut the balls off the union bully boys.

According to the myth.

There’s enough truth in this story to justify the headlines. But it is far from the whole truth.

Fact One. Rupert Murdoch  did not vanquish the union bosses in his moonlight flit to Wapping in 1982. The bosses of the trade union’s for some years before Wapping had been working with Governments and managements to bring about agreed reforms in  work place practices. Which had failed, partly because of the power of the guerilla leaders amongst the trade union movement, most notably the shop stewards of some of the Fleet Street unions, who were successfully negotiating higher and higher salaries for the work done by their members, and using their power to stop newspaper managements, introducing the new technology, which made their skills redundant.

Murdoch’s unilateral act changed all that. And made it possible for Thatcher to bring in her anti-union legislation and usher in her brave new world of un-regulated capitalism.  

Fact Two. Even if today’s trade union leaders had the histrionic skills of the likes of Arthur Scargill, they would not be able to take us back to the 1970s, which the current scare stories suggest. Unions no longer have the power. Because trade union membership has halved. Because the anti-union laws introduced by Thatcher prevent the trade unions from doing many things they could do in 1982. And  because, although we have had a Labour government since 1997 we  now have a lot of of companies, who are actively trying to prevent their employees joining unions. Which fits in beautifully with the Cameron line. If you have decent bosses,  who are Macmillan Conservatives, not Thatcherites, they will look after the work force. No need for troublesome trade unions to rock the management boat.

On 24 January, 1982 Rupert Murdoch saved the British newspaper industry by organising a military campaign of which Napoleon would have been proud. With great secrecy he deceived the journalists and others employed by Times Newspapers and moved their place of work to Wapping.

Murdoch did this with all the legitimancy of sharedolder power. The Times was losing pots of money because they were being held to ransom by the trade union bosses. It was in the interests of the shareholders to escape from this. Murdoch’s move was an enormous boost for the government of Margaret Thatcher. It enabaled her  to re-shape UK 1982 according to her own vision, which harked back to herown  notion of the virtues of Victorian Britain.

Trust the shareholders, argued Margaret Thatcher. They have have staked their beliefs with their savings. She won the day, so much so, that when Labour got itself re-elected, via Tony Blair, her legacy was celebrated. Blair, who was himself a Conservative until he got the hots for a young Socialist woman called Cherie. He praised her legacy, and created New Labour. Which continues today under Gordon Brown, who helped him create it.

Brown, who unlike Blair, actually believes in Labour values, is now campaigning to be re-elected. Not on his Labour beliefs. Far from it, he is distancing himself from today’s trade unionists, who are speaking, even striking against the nasty Thatcherism of several of today’s bosses.

They now call themselves managers. And they demand huge salaries because they are being ‘tough’ on behalf of the shareholders. Courageously firing lots of not very well paid workers. Their salaries are justified becaese other chaps they know are being paid even more!

That’s the reality of the market!

In this new managerial capitalism, these managers get their huge salaries, irrespective as to whether the enterprises they manage succeed or fail. Unlike the old-fashioned capitalists, who lost their savings and their livelihood if they failed, this new lot takes their money and lives in luxury for the rest of their lives.

Which, as as would be obvious to a visitor from Mars, is not a sensible way of running the major big companies who govern so much of our lives.

The current debate on the failures of capitalism is focussed on the failings of the bankers. And their part in causing the present world-wide econonmic problems. But the problem is not only the way the banks have been run. It is all big companies.

Presently they are by law enjoined to act in the interests of the shareholders.

It is a model which suited Victorian England. But it is totally inadequate to deal with the problems of 2010.

After many months of cogitating Rupert Murdoch has made up his mind. While every other British newspaper boss is wetting their pants about what to do about the millions of pounds they are losing by going on printing their newspapers, Rupert has decided. He is not going to to permit readers to read  The Times for free.

They are now going to have to pay  £1 if they want to read what is in today’s Times. Or £2 a month if they want to have read The Times for a year.

And make no mistake about it. This decision has been made by Rupert, not his son James who is supposedly the boss of the Murdoch media interests. But by his Dad, who is a geriactric aged 79 enyoying daily the caresses of his third wife. Despite the fact that he is a born again Christian who is supposed to believe in marriage on the ’til death does us part’ synario.

So although I believe that Murdoch’s decision on paywalls is right, I do not agree with his other decision. To use  the influence of his media empire  to try and persuade the British electorate to vote in a bunch of Old Etonians to run the country.

This is not what the Rupert Murdoch I first met in 1968 would have wanted.

Sixteen days since the Daily Novel came out! No, it’s nothing to do with the trade unions, although the Daily Novel is a hundred per cent union shop. And certainly not because there is a shortage of news to interpret and comment on. The Football Associiation has lost its boss yet again and just before the World Cup. The Wolves managed  a draw on Saturday away against ancient local rivals, Aston Villa, who are near the top of the Premiership, whereas the Wolves are struggling to avoid relegation. It is their first ever  year in the Premiership, but for most of the year it is looked as if they would go right back down again. They still do not compare with the First Division club of the days of Billy Wright. And they are keeping the fans on edge and may go on doing so until the last whistle of the season.

And then there’s another orgy  of politician shaming, with ex-cabinet ministers being taken in by an old-fashioned sting of the kind that the News of the World used to excel in.Only this time around it was Sunday Times and Channel Four journalists hamming it up by pretending to be high powered lobbyists, eager to pour money into MP’s pockets. Right and left were targeted the headlines were filled by the ex-ministers, so that Labour will probably be more harmed by it in the forthcoming election.

And then there’s the trade unions. The public service unions are striking today – Budget day! The airline cabin staff are fighting a battle royal against the a tough boss. But their success in downing about twenty per cent of the planes is paltry compared with the mostly adverse headlines they have generated. The railwaymen are gearing up for action.

All this is a salutary reminder that Britain no longer has an effective left wing press. The big battalions, led by the Murdoch papers, the Telegraphs  and the Daily Mail, are staunchly right. The Guardian, the BBC and Channel Four are doing some splendid reporting but they also stick (well, mostly) to the conventions of serious journalism, keeping a balance, giving victims ample space to challenge their reports.

So it is not suprising that the overall impression that the nation is at risk because of a new generation of union bully boys of the likes of Arthur Scargill is gaining hold. Whereas the truth in the paragraphs of small print is that union membership has plunged as badly as the crowds at the Wolves ground, 20,000 compared with the 70,000 who flocked to the Molineaux of my youth.

Much to write about. And before a crucial general election. Hopefully the Daily Novel will be daily again, before Brown announces the election date. But I cannot be sure, because the modest technical changes being made have already taken three months longer than I expected.

Must go now. And grapple again with computer stuff.

Just seen the Cameron Uncovered 8 PM programme on Channel Four in the renowned Dispatches slot. It takes the Daily Novel prize for the worst TV programme on British politics the Daily Novelist can remember. For the following reasons.

1. It was a collection of sound bites extracted by Andrew Rawnsley, an Observer political journalist, and used by him to deliver a powerful message about Cameron. This is based on a notion which used to be fashionable that the attention span of broadcast viewers is about 30 seconds. This notion has been exploded more recently, notably by the BBC in its television and radio news and by Jon Snow on Channel Four News. They give more time in news programmes than Cameron Uncovered gave in its political analysis, for what the interviewees were actually saying.

2.The programme’s credibility was greatly enhanced because the sound  bites came from a wide range of prominent people, going back to one of  his teachers at Oxford, Vernon Bogandor. They included top civil servants, whose sound bites demonstrated that he would have difficulty in cutting public services without reducing the actual provision for the poor and disadvantaged. And one who told us that all Prime Ministers were at risk from their own Chancellor of the Exchequer, which fuelled the Rawnsley line that a Cameron government was going to suffer from feuds between Cameron and his Chancellor, George Osborne. Other sound bites came from Ed Vaisey, whose suggestion that Mrs Cameron might vote left, was given pre-programme publicity. And, of course, there were the sound bites from the other side, Peter Mandelson, who demonstrated his skill of delivering killer punches, clothed with a velvet glove. There was also Sir Alan Budd, a distinguished economist, projected for a role in the Cameron government, who not only cast doubt on how much public services would have to be cut to reduce the deficit, but also said that Cameron would probably have to RAISE taxes, which will not go down well in the Tory shires.

3. These sound bites were extracted from what were clearly quite long interviews. But what the viewer got was not the arguments of the interviewee, but sound bites presented in a chain of sound bites.

4. The programme was  clearly made over a period of a several months. Many of Rawnsley’s own comments were clearly assuming that Cameron was going to form the next government. Even a few weeks ago, that was the prevailing belief. But the latest opinion polls mostly demonstrate  that the  Cameron lead is dwindling so seriously that, come the day, Brown might even end up forming the next government.

5. While he was making the programme Rawnsley himself adhered to this view. His book, entitled The end of the party’,which has just been published, is based on this belief, which he now doubts.

6. My evidence for this comes from Rawnsley’s own column in The Observer yesterday, in which he admits that this is now a possibility. The last paragraph of his column yesterday, which was not read to viewers of his Channel Four programme, reads as follows:

Most people on both sides of the fence still work on the assumption that David Cameron is going to move into Number 10 on 7 May. But it is no longer completely outlandish to wonder whether the next prime minister might be the tortured, temparamental son of the manse whom everyone, including his own cabinet, had written off. In which case, I can think of an author who would have to adjust the title of his latest book.

Alas, Andrew, it is too late. The book is in the reader’s hands already.

But all credit to you, by reporting faithfully that events have overtaken it.  You have learnt your lesson.

I hope the programme makers have also learnt their lesson. Executive Producer of Cameron Uncovered was Anne Lapping, who has a most distinguished record of producing good TV programmes on politics. Let’s hope that she will produce a few during this election. But if she does she will have to do it much more quickly and with equal rigour.

Tough. But’s that’s the challenge of the world we live.

When journalists are asked for their copy, before they have had a chance to think about it.

One of the trials of the manic depressive temperament is that in the mainc phase the ideas flow fast and furious. So as well as party ideas my unconscious mind has been popping up ambitious new plans for improving my blog and has been urging me to jump on the iphone bandwagon. So on top of having to relearn Excel in order to keep track of who was coming to the party I saddled myself  quite un-necssarily with having to learn Applespeak.

After a few initial failures to connect to the internet, it is now working like a dream and I love mine almost as much as  Stephen Fry loves  his. I can now read the mobile Guardian and my emails in bed. It is a most beautiful example of the new technology and it has turned me into a fan of Steve Jobs who got up from his death bed a couple of years ago and organised its design and launch.

But it is not perfect. As I found on Wednesday when I felt confident enough to change the keyboard layout to Dvorak. This keyboard, designed by August Dvorak in the late 1920s is far more efficent than QWERTY, as you can discover if you click on Campaign to retire QWERTY at the top of this blog. Apple has been including Dvorak as a standard item on its computers since the pioneering days, many years before Bill Gates made it a standard offer for PCs with the introduction of Windows in the 1990s.

Sadly Jobs has not put it in the iphone. I did manage to find one from a third party developer. It worked fine.

Once.

When I turned off my phone and turned it on again, it had disappeared.

It may just be teething troubles. I willl keep you posted.

Meanwhile I have to postpone the next round in the fight to retire QWERTY and write something about Michael Foot.

Snow scare stories are still dominating the media. Both daughters rang up yesterday afternoon to warn us to stock up because heavy falls were predicted in the south of England today. Listening to the BBC 8 o-clock news this morning added to the dire tidings. Nearby Hampshire had a foot of snow and some motorists had been trapped in their cars on the A3.

Quite an anti-climax when I drew back the curtains. In our part of Dorset we have yet to see anything so dramatic. More a dusting of parts of the landscape as my pics demonstrate.

It’s been raining in Lyme Bay and and now it’s dark, although only 6 PM. As the day progressed I sank deeper and deeper into depression. By the afternoon I could not even write a sentance in my head which I wanted to publish. I was drowning. No point in waving.  No signal I could give would make the slightest difference. Why should anyone anywhere bother to read what I say?

Because, I know, I am an incompetant. Why should anyone take notice of anything I have so say about politics, journalism or education? There are many others who know much more about what is happening in these areas.

But what I DO know more about than the leaders in politics, journalism and education is computers, the digital worrld aed the internet.

But I loused up. I messed up the visit of my grandchildren last week, by relying on my mobile phone. Which told me at the critical moment, ‘ Emergency Calls only. So, I, and they, spent the whole day, not making contact.

What was wrong, as I subsequently discovered from the helpline, was that there was a speck of dust on my SYM card. It had happened to me before, and I cursed myself because I had forgotten.

Me and millions of others. As we all try to grapple with the digital age.

So tonight I don’t feel suicidal. How could I. Since as my picture shows, I had every reason to feel good on the day I messed up. The sun was shining over Lyme Bay, and the Golden Cap was really golden.

But what has been depressing me over the last week or two is the state of British politics, 2009.

Very, very, depressing. Our leaders are floundering as hopelessly as me in this new global age. Capitalism as we know it has collapsed. And Britain’s New Labour has found itself owning major banks. Not because they want  to nationalise them, but because they could see no alternative.

They don’t know what to do. Our leaders, Gordon Brown and his team. Gordon is soldiering on and will fight the election next year. But he does not have any idea about what he will do, if, contrary to all the polls, he wins the election. Neither do Labour’s leaders in waiting. David Milibrand is not prepared to pitch to be the new Europe’s first Foreign Secretary. A new role, and one which offers much influence but little power.

Alan Johnson, the minister who is best placed to get traditional Labour voters to the polls, since  he is actually is white working class, has messed up even more spectacularly.

He has fired his leading scientific adviser on drugs, for telling him, what has been crystal clear for years now – Alcohol, which is legal and taken daily in large doses by Labour voters, Conservative voters and even the Lib Dems, who do not spend all their time drinking green tea, damages far more lives than canabis. Not only from those who drink, but because the drinkers beat up their wives. And because the number of teenagers who are sent psychotic by pot is tiny, comapred with the number of teenagers, who get pissed on booze and charge around the streets late at night.

Johnson could have shown himself a leader. By speaking out to the white working class.

Instead, he pandered to their prejudices.

Get tough with sciance professors. Pander to the public fear, whipped up by sections of the media, about illegal drugs and the remote danger of being mugged by pot smokers.

With not much challenge for the opposition. Because David Cameron is far too pre-occupied with getting himself out of the hole he has dug for himself over another referendum on Europe.

But that should be the subject of another blog.

Saturday’s first-ever literary festival in the village of Charmouth in Dorset proved a wake-up call. The underlying message was clear. Don’t grovel at the feet of the literary lions;  get up out of your arm chair, you too can be an author. And it’s never too late. You can start at forty, fifty or even seventy-five. 

One of the two main organisers, Wendy Knee, pictured left, has just published a self-help book, Never Die Wondering. The title comes from her father’s words of advice to her when she was aged seventeen. www.wendyknee.com

www.neverdiewondering.wordpresss.com

I didn’t appreciate what he meant until I was 35 and didn’t act on it until I was in my forties. In my fifties I began to live it. Before that I lived a life of conformity. I was the aggrieved teenager, the dutiful wife and the devoted mother. But I broke out.

And the message of her latest book is that you too can live the life you want if only you have the courage to follow your dreams.

Wendy is a Lancashire lass who joined the Women’s Royal Air Force aged 17. That must have been a stiff dose of conformity. But after she broke out she travelled to Uzbekistan, Ecuador, Guatamala and many more countries. And at 58 she learnt to play the saxophone.

Phew.

The other festival organiser, Sallyann Sheridan has been a writer most of her life. She began as an advertising copywriter, went on to writing non-fiction books like The Good Handwriting Guide and Painting for Pleasure. More recently she has published short fiction in magazines. And now she has published her first novel, If Wishes Were Horses. Apparently this is a murder mystery set in Lyme Regis and tells the tale of one Jetta Fellowes, who decides to embark an a new career as a murderer in her eightieth year. http://www.sallyannsheridan.com/

Another of the authors who spoke on Saturday, Colin Ive, pictured left, has written about drama in real life in I Knew You’d Come!; Stories from a firefighter.

One of  the people who was glad he had come was our own dear Queen, because Ive was one of the firefighters who was called to the blaze at Windsor Castle, just in time to save most of the Royal paintings.

colin.ive@smecontinuity.com

Most of the authors live in Charmouth, but Eve Cox, pictured left, lives in nearby Budleigh Salterton, which they tell me has its own literary festival. She has just published Dark Secrets, a mystery novel, whose main character is Tom Lynsey, an army man wounded in the Gulf War. When he returns home he discovers  that he has inherited a large property on Dartmoor. Lucky man, you might think. But according to the blurb, he is in for an emotional rollercoaster ride in which he discovers shocking family secrets. www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/

Another self-help writer, Anne Orchard, author of Their Cancer – Your Journey, was talking about how to self publish. She has written a guide, How to Self Publish, which is packed with practical advice only on printing and publishing but on writing and editing. 

The organisers have already decided to make the festival an annual event.

In 2010 it will be on Saturday, October 16, in the Village Hall.

…….British journalism lost one of its finest practioners, Harold Evans, the editor of the Sunday Times, when it did, what journalists are supposed to do – but do so rarely – expose the iniquities of those in power. Make them accountable.

This the Sunday Times did when Harry was editing it. Exposing the giant company which foisted the thalodomide drug on the market, leading to thousands born with deformities. Exposing the British government and the British establishment, when it tried to suppress the publincation of the cabinet memoirs of a member of the Wilson government, Richard Crossman.

Harry tells the story pretty truthfully in his autobiography, My Paper Chase, which I have now nearly finished reading. Harry fell in love with Tina, when she came to the Sunday Times from Oxford, where she was a non-fiction, Zuleika Dobson. Harry fell in love immediately. Although he was a not unhappy married man. But he did not force his attentions on the university student, he encouraged her to pursue her career elsewhere, with the Telegragh.

Meanwhile Rupert Murdoch, the arch villain bought The Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and News of the World, and appointed Harry as editor of The Times. Despite his track record he made a pig’s ear of the job. He was totally out of his depth, running a daily newspaper, and inheriting a staff which included Charlie Douglas Home, the scion of the Scottish aristos. He played a key role in the downfall of the engine driver’s son.

The evidence is not only in Harry’s autobiography, but also in the official history of The Times, written by one John Grigg, aka Lord Altringham. He  fed  Murdoch with the news that The Times under Harry was in chaos. Out of control. He was right. Which Murdoch realised. And Home got his reward when he was made editor, after Murdoch forced Harry’s resignation.

All true.

But Murdoch did not determine Harry’s options. He was then the hero of many British journalists. Still is. Alan Rusbridger, the current editor of  The Guardian, is one of many who bowed down to his reputation, and gave him a royal welcome this week, when he was in London to promote his book.

He could have had another  plum top media job. Had he not been in love with Tina who was being courted by US journalism, and most particularly Vanity Fair. So Harry went to live in New York and made a new career in US book and magazine publishing.

A loss to British journalism,  but a gain for his personal life.

 I am bound to report, that Harry seemed very happy when he was here last week, as my photo, taken at a party for him at the Wapping Project, given by the group he worked for so well, now called Thomson Reuters.

The picture credit is to http://www.stuartconway.com.